How Might Artificial Intelligence Influence Human Evolution?
An intriguing article, "How Might Artificial Intelligence Influence Human Evolution?" by Robert C Brooks (UNSW in Sydney) is exploring the possible impact of hashtag#AI on the hashtag#evolution of our species (it is funny how the word "species" makes it ambiguous whether we are talking about one or multiple species). Sadly, behind a paywall, so I am sharing a great summarizing figure from the article.
The abstract gives a good idea of the general concepts: "This article considers instead the inevitable but incremental evolutionary consequences of AI’s everyday use and human-AI interactions. I consider some possible forms of human-AI interaction, and the evolutionary implications of such interactions via natural selection, including forms of selection that resemble the inadvertent and deliberate selection that occur during domestication. The direction and rate of evolution can be hard to predict even for organisms kept under controlled conditions. Far more so the complexities of predicting selection and resulting evolution of humans in a fast-moving AI-rich world. Nonetheless, I extract several predictions, including the acceleration of recent trends toward smaller brains, selection on attention spans, personality types, and mood-disorder susceptibilities. Further, changes in intimacy-building and mating competition due to AI applications that act as friends and intimates are likely already affecting mating success and may influence the evolution of social behavior."
Speaking of inadvertent selection during domestication, I am wondering who the domesticator is in this case.